Hush Little Girl by Lisa Regan (first e reader .txt) 📗

her eye. She took a few steps toward it and saw there was a lock on the door. Not just any kind of lock but a deadbolt. Who put a deadbolt lock on the inside of their bedroom door?

Josie went back into the hallway and checked the other bedroom doors. Emily and Holly’s room also had a deadbolt lock on the inside of their door. The last bedroom had no lock.

“What the hell?” she muttered to herself as she returned to Lorelei’s room. Her eyes panned the room again, landing on the bed once more. The mattress sat on what appeared to be a solid metal frame. It took several tries for Josie to dislodge the mattress and push it partially off the frame. In the middle of the metal frame was a small, sliding metal door.

Josie ran down the steps as fast as her wedding dress would allow. “Chan!” she hollered as she burst onto the back porch, overlooking the garden and greenhouse. “Chan!”

Officer Chan was just leaving the greenhouse. She stopped in the center of the garden and stared at Josie. “You got something?”

“I think so.”

A few minutes later, Josie and Gretchen stood in the doorway of Lorelei’s bedroom as Chan used gloved hands to pull items from the hollow core of the bedframe, narrating as she went. “Three boxes of ammunition for a Winchester 1200 shotgun. A large plastic sewing kit. A small plastic bin filled with… knives of various sizes. A smaller plastic container with three pair of scissors in it.” Using a flashlight, she searched the compartment one last time. “That’s it.”

“Nothing else?” Josie said.

“Sorry,” Chan said. “Just all this weird stuff. Want me to log it in as evidence?”

“No,” Gretchen said. “I don’t think you need to. Thanks.”

She gave them a mock salute before leaving them alone in the room. Josie said, “She knew she was in danger.”

“Yes,” Gretchen agreed.

Josie opened her mouth to speak again but a sound froze her in place. Another thud, this one louder, closer. They looked at one another, eyes wide. “She’s here,” Josie said quietly.

“She can’t be,” Gretchen replied. “We searched every nook and cranny of this place.”

“Rini scented her here, in this house, in her own room.”

“Boss, the dog could be wrong.”

“You heard Sandoval. Rini’s never been wrong before.”

With a sigh, Gretchen said, “What are we missing?”

Again, they walked through the house, calling out Emily’s name, telling her it was safe to come out from her hiding place. In the rooms that were carpeted, they checked for loose seams, and in the rooms that weren’t, they checked for loose floorboards. They looked behind furniture and inside closets to see if there were any secret compartments they had missed.

Nothing.

Back outside, Sandoval and Rini waited by her SUV for another dog and handler to arrive. Josie stared at the house, thinking of the day that Lorelei had brought her here. If Lorelei believed she was in so much danger, why would she bring a stranger to her home? Had she known she was in danger when Josie was her guest, or had something happened in the three months since they’d met? Something to make her hide all the sharp items in her home in a secret compartment under her mattress, and put deadbolt locks on the insides of the occupied bedroom doors?

Josie thought back to that day in January. Everything downstairs had been the same. She just hadn’t realized at the time that Lorelei had effectively rid her home of harmful objects like knives and scissors or even glass from wall art that could be shattered and used to hurt someone. Josie hadn’t had any reason to think that Lorelei and her daughters were in danger, or even that they were afraid. In fact, Lorelei had left both girls home alone that day. Would she have left them alone if she was so afraid someone was going to injure them?

“Boss?” Gretchen said.

Josie looked away from the front door and back at Gretchen, suddenly realizing she had taken several steps back toward the house. Her stockinged feet were at the base of the steps. Where they had been the day she trailed Lorelei into the house. Josie visualized that cold, nasty day once more. By the time they reached the house, the sleet was coming down harder. Josie’s boots squished in the layer of wet snow accumulating on each step as she followed Lorelei to the front door.

“It sticks sometimes,” Lorelei had said as she struggled to turn the key in the lock. Laughing, she had put her full weight into it, and in doing so, fell forward a bit, her shoulder hitting the doorbell. Josie remembered hearing the muted chime from inside. She’d done it twice before the door opened.

But what if it hadn’t been an accident? What if it had been purposeful?

Josie’s fingers reached out, lingering over the doorbell.

Behind her, Gretchen padded up the steps. “Boss?” she said again.

Josie pressed the bell, hearing the chime from inside, louder now, because the front door was slightly ajar. She counted off three seconds and rang it again. Then she stepped inside, again picturing Lorelei. She’d been talking to Josie as she walked through the living room, telling Josie how she grew much of her own food out back even in winter, as she was lucky enough to have a greenhouse. In the dining room, one of the chairs was against the wall rather than tucked beneath the table. Lorelei had dragged it across the room, putting it back in place, but making a horrific noise as its feet scraped across the tile floor. At the time, Josie had absently wondered why she didn’t just pick it up, but Lorelei was talking about how she homeschooled her girls and Josie didn’t want to be rude, so she focused on Lorelei’s words.

Now, Josie picked up one of the chairs, put it against the wall where she’d seen it the first time she visited. Then she dragged it across the room, causing a sound